Tractor Sizing What size do I need?

Kansas · Jun 25, 2001

I own 80 acres of hay/pasture which I rent to a family member but help manage. I would like to cut hay, rake hay, possibly haul a round bale, mow pasture, and use a loader for endless purposes - pull out old fence, haul manure, push brush piles together, etc. What size tractor do I need?

Bird · Jun 25, 2001

Kansas, I'm sure some other members know more about this than I, but the only haybine (hay cutter) and round baler that I've used had manuals that called for a minimum of 50hp. And most of my experience with them was using an 85hp tractor (old Oliver) that handled them very easily with power to spare. However, one neighbor whose primary occupation is the hay business has 3 John Deeres in the 100-120hp range. Of course all three are air-conditioned cab models and he routinely moves those round bales around two at a time; one on each end of the tractor. He has to have hay spears on front end loaders that will stack those bales 2 bales high on his flat bed 18-wheeler. And then he pulls a 24' disk to plow and double 14' drills to plant.

Bird

GlueGuy · Jun 25, 2001

How much of that 80 will you be mowing? As for the other things, how much do you need to load at one time? (500 lbs, 1000 lbs, 1500 lbs, etc)?

The GlueGuy

radman · Jun 25, 2001

I recommend the 50-60+ hp range for those chores. 60+ hp would be probably more ideal. Large round bales can weigh 1500 lbs, and are too much for a compact tractor/loader. Even at 50-60hp, they are best carried on a 3pt. For that amount of land a compact tractor is probably too small. I would recommend a utility class tractor (ie. JD 5000 series) For loader use, a MFWD is a definite plus.

ejb · Jun 26, 2001

I agreee with the others...something in the JD 5000 series would be a good choice if the budget permits. Any serious work on 80 acres is going to require a bit of HP and in the 5000 series you can go from 45-75 HP (5220, 5320, 5420, 5520 models) in 10HP increments. It really depends on how much work you want to do...if you just want to play around you could get away with something smaller i.e. the JD 4000 series or one of the smaller orange or blue ones. (Not that the smaller tractors are toys, but for 80 acres any serious work is going to take some serious tractor).

I have 175 acres and regulary mow 25-30 acres of it with my JD 5410 and a 7foot cutter and sometimes I really wish I had a 15 ft cutter...then again if I was only going to do it once a year I could probably get away with a much smaller machine and a smaller cutter.

We get a lot of snow so the big tractor is a tremendous help in the winters.

Good luck.

Anonymous Poster · Jun 26, 2001

To stretch your dollars, check out the John Deere 5X05 Advantage series...

But, of course... I have a slight tilt toward this baby.../w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif